Food Part 4

In an effort to include as many interesting foods as possible, and knowing that I have a holiday coming up in which I will definitely encounter new things, I am about to show all of the photos which have been building up on my computer. Are you ready? You could be reading for some time!


This kind of meal has become my standby - good old Indomie, which you can actually buy in Australia (I even found some in my small country town a few years ago!!). They are basically 2-minute noodles, but along with the seasoning they come with kecap manis and sambal (sweet soy sauce and chilli sauce) as well as a little packet of fried onions to sprinkle over the top. I make them into a more complete meal by cooking them with carrots and greens (usually kangkung or another type of greenery), and adding bean sprouts right at the end. A new dish to add to my list of comfort food, and so easy to make! If you do want to make your 2minute noodles more interesting, it's worth trying to get a packet of fried onions - they use a small variety, not regular brown onions - and I've found them before in Asian supermarkets near home.

I've mentioned baso before (meatball soup) but have since learnt more about it. The word 'baso' (or bakso in other parts of Indonesia) actually refers to the meatballs, not the soup. Below is the baso komplit (no prizes for guessing the meaning of komplit!) which had regular beef baso, baso ayam (chicken), baso goreng (fried) and one more that I've forgotten! Also in the picture is the free dessert one of the others got with their meal - containing cubes of white bread, ice cream, chocolate sprinkles, fresh coconut at strawberry syrup!!!

This is lotek - from the gado-gado family (which is basically a vegetable salad with peanut suace, but has variations across Indonesia) with blanched kangkung, bean sprouts, string beans, cabbage etc. plus peanut sauce. Also krupuk (prawn crackers). I haven't found a good translation of kangkung yet (I have never seen it in Australia) but it's an asian green which is very good!

More kangkung! I needed some vegetables, so ordered kangkung spesial - which contained kangkung, quail eggs, beef, garlic, chill and tomato. Aside from having to pick out the larger pieces of chilli, I really enjoyed this. I'm getting better at spicy food - this was just on the right side of the line between 'tasty' and 'my mouth is on fire!'

Pempek has been a great discovery - it has a great story behind the if you want to check out wikipedia - it's made from fish and tapioca. This one is pempek kapal selam (submarine pempek!!!) with a whole egg inside, which is fried and then served with a runny sauce called kuah cuko (made from palm sugar, chilli pepper, garlic, vinegar, salt added to boiling water). I found the sauce a bit spicy, but not so much I couldn't enjoy the pempek, which doesn't have a very strong taste, but the texture is chewy and the whole thing just works.

Pempek is used in a wide variety of ways, and comes in lots of different shapes. This is lenggang - an omelette made with slices of pempek and also served with kuah cuko.

Soto ayam - comfort food! There are variations on this in different regions, but chicken soup will always be a good bet. To eat this, you spoon some of the meat/veggies onto the rice, then eat. Chill optional ;-)

Another kind of soup is soto Bandung - made with beef, daikon radish and kacang - which I thought meant peanut, but obviously applies to a variety of nuts and beans. Again, this is eaten by combining the solid parts of the soup with rice.

Now this soup is really yummy - sorry mum and dad, it even rivals your slow cooked veggie soup! It's called sop buntut (ox tail soup), although it's made from beef tails, not ox. We had the original version - with gorgeous meat falling of the bones into a tasty broth with veggies - and sop buntut goreng - where the meat is fried with a slightly sweet sauce and served fired oxtail, served with the veggie soup.

Whew! Nearly there. I'll finish with something to make you laugh: a 30cm hot dog. Ridiculous, I know. Hotdogs are actually fairly common here, usually called 'sosis' (say it out loud!) and often cooked in different ways, not just in a bread roll. I have trouble calling them sausages, or real food, though!

Food Part 3 - Warung

I haven't done as much eating at warung as I thought I would (a decent cluster of them are an angkot ride away) and after dark the angkot don't go past my house, so it's not that convenient. However, on my way home from the supermarket I have tried some sweets/snacks. The first was es cendol, from a gorgeous old man with a cart, who was quite bemused when I asked for a photo. I think he might not have much Indonesian, and probably speaks Sundanese (the local language), but we got there in the end.

Basically cendol is a mix of coconut milk, palm sugar syrup, water and different-shaped jellies made from rice flour. It's sweet, but the palm sugar gives a depth that's hard to describe - I guess like brown sugar, but better! A bit butterscotchy? The jellies don't have a strong taste - the green ones were made with pandan, of course, but I guess they are there for texture. 

The penjual (seller) mixes up the ingredients in a glass, then pours it into a plastic bag. You can 'drink' it straight away (the green jellies made it up my straw, but not the pink ones!) or he will tie the bag and you can take it home. It doesn't look as difficult to make as I imagined - here's a recipe I found with a quick google search if you are interested. If you can find the ingredients, it's definitely worth it!

http://www.belindo.com/indonesia/indonesian-recipes/beverages/es-cendol/183

Last Saturday I finally stopped at this warung, which I've been wanting to for a while, but have not been able to justify it. Cue a message from my sister, reminding me to keep taking food pictures! So, for research purposes of course, I bought one of each. The warung has 'gorengan' written on the side, which literally means fried things. Grammar note: the suffix -an turns the verb 'goreng' (to fry), into a noun. There are lots of gorengan warung on the streets, but most of them sell savoury gorengan, and that's not as appealing to me!

Okay - here's my attempt at describing each of these! I'll go clockwise from the twisty one at the bottom. My apologies for the lack of names - I had to get my shopping home so didn't stop to talk much, although the guy was lovely - I will have to go back some time. Purely for research, of course!
1. The twisty one was fairly hard, more like a biscuit than a pastry, and only just barely sweet.
2. Next was banana wrapped in a cakey-type pastry - again only just sweet, but yummy because of the banana.
3. The doughnut shaped one is, you guessed it, a doughnut! A light, soft doughnut with just a fine coating of sugar.
4. The long thing one was more like a chox pastry, very airy.
5. The round ball coated in sesame seeds had some sort of bean paste in the middle, maybe red bean.
6. The dark one next to it was the only truly sweet gorengan in the mix - which surprised me because usually desserts are VERY sweet. This one was sticky and dense in the middle with a crusty, sugary outside. Very yummy, but I have no idea what it was made from! Maybe sesame?
7. The next one was very like number 4, only a different shape!
8. The last one was round and not too thick, with a nut filling.

Food Part 2

Ok, so I'm a bit behind on the blog front, but now that exams have started I have a little more time, so am attempting to catch up. I'll start with sweets (cue comments from those who know me well along the lines of "Why are we not surprised?").

I found these cakes at the supermarket - they are called Kue Pia, and the internet tells me they are Chinese. They have a cakey kind of pastry around the outside and a filling made of black beans. They aren't as sweet as I was expecting, but still yummy!

Here's a close up in case you want to read the Indonesian on the packet:

Last Thursday we had a day off, so a friend and I went out looking for yummy food. She took me to Cafe Madtari, which began life as a warung (street food stall) and then became popular and more permanent. There were Kraft signs everywhere; I think they may even be sponsored by Kraft?? Anyway, it was obvious there was going to be a lot of cheese.

So this was our breakfast - roti bakar dengan susu, keju dan lain-lain! (Toasted/grilled bread with milk - actually sweetened condensed milk - cheese and more!)

Mine also had pisang (banana) and strawberry syrup inside, plus chocolate sprinkles on top! It's very common here to combine cheese with sweet things (not super great quality cheese, by the way, just ordinary plastic cheese as my family would call it!) and even though the idea takes a bit of getting used to, it's good :-) There was a lot going on on the plate, and a serious amount of cheese, so it wasn't the easiest thing to eat with a tiny plastic fork thingy (even though the bread was cut into pieces - which you can't see for all the cheese), but it did taste good. Having said that, I don't think I will have it for breakfast again :-P

After our breakfast we decided to go for a walk and some shopping, but found that the place we wanted to go was closed, so we went for tea and cake instead! I know, I know, no one is surprised to hear that from me :-) We went to Amanda's, which is famous for its brownies, which came served with strawberry ice cream. Yum!

And finally here are some drinks. First some es teh (iced tea), then some jus blackberry (do I really need to translate?!) (which was tangy and just sweet enough - most juices and drinks get sugar syrup added to them, sometimes too much sugar!), then lastly es cendol, which I struggle to call a drink, given the floaties (more about cendol and other street food next post).

PS: Mum and Dad, I promise I am actually eating healthy food too! Just not all the time ;-)

Friday afternoons

There are some pretty obvious advantages that come with not having any classes on Friday afternoons (actually the majority of my classes are in the morning - not sure if that is by design or accident), but there is one big disadvantage: a part of me is already in the weekend! Sitting at my desk working for three hours is not exactly the most motivating prospect, despite my long to do list. The best approach I've found is to chip away - do one thing at a time, until eventually something gets done ;-) So, in that spirit, here are some of the things I've been cooking.

Baso is a common dish here - it can be found everywhere from street food to restaurants. The word baso refers to the meatballs, which are usually chicken or beef, but can be other things (ok, to be honest calling them meatballs is usually a bit of a stretch), and they are most often served in soup/broth, perhaps with some noodles, vegetables, fried onions and other garnishes. I found some in the supermarket last week, and decided to make some soup. I put corn in mine - which is not exactly traditional - and it was both super easy and quick to make, so it will definitely get a repeat showing.

Siomay are a lot like baso, except they are usually made from prawns or fish. The ones I bought had a wrapper around them, so to me they are similar to dim sims, except with prawns inside. This time I added beaten egg to my soup when it was nearly done, which looked a bit weird but tasted good :-)

Ok, to be honest I only made the rice in this one, in my rice cooker - I thought it was time I made something in it other than cake! A friend came over on Monday (we had a day off) and we had a trade off - I showed her how to make banana cake, and she made smashed tofu. I'm sure it has another name, but I like the sound of that one! It was really easy - just cook lots of onion and garlic in some oil, add the tofu (which was in small yellow blocks - I think it might be the local Bandung version) and break it up with the spoon while it cooks. Then you finish with spring onions. Yum!!!

Last but not least, my other attempt at making something other than cake in my rice cooker. This demonstrates my laziness when it comes to cooking (funny, I will spend hours making tiny sugar flowers to go on someone's birthday cake, but get annoyed sometimes if cooking my tea takes more than 20min or two pans!!). This is the definition of easy - put in rice, diced chicken, diced vegetables and water, then press cook. Full stop. It needed a bit more flavour, so next time maybe some chicken stock, or brown some onions and garlic first, and it was a bit of a gloopy mess because turns out I bought sticky rice instead of normal (it was the only small packet - all the others were huge!!), but it was tasty, filling, and lasted nearly all week ;-)

I'll leave with something to make you smile. My first thought when I found out I had sticky rice was, "great - now I can make rice pudding"! Cake Girl, indeed.

Getting lost, a little yellow ducky and a motorcycle taxi

So, I'm a little slow because this is a story about last Saturday, but I still think it's worth telling!

I had decided I needed to get out of the house, and go do something by myself, so I headed off to BIP (Bandung Indah Plaza - a shopping mall) to get a new watch battery, some stationary and try to find some work clothes. I got a laugh out of my reception on the angkot by a group of primary school students (Indonesian schools usually operate 6 days a week, so Saturday is not a day off!). There was a moment of shocked quiet, followed by lots of giggling. I told my sister, who caused my first tiny moment of homesickness by saying she misses being stared at, now that I'm not with her to attract attention. I guess, having spent my whole life with the two of us being stared at, I'm used to it, and being one of the few westerners in this area means life is no different. It doesn't help when I wear my fabulous new t-shirt (thanks, sis!) which is tardis blue, and has the slogan "Keep calm and don't blink" in big white letters on the front. I haven't found anyone yet who knows what it refers to, and the joke is kind of flat when I have to explain it ;-)

But I'm off track - back to my story, in which I was also off track. I didn't get off the angkot at the right place, and ended up in an area I had never seen before! Luckily when I asked the driver, he was very helpful and stopped another angkot for me, which took me to BIP. I can't say I love shopping by myself, but it was kind of fun to wander around the shops, and it was exciting every time I managed to find something on my list :-) For lunch I had miho Singapore, from a place in the food court called mi hotplet & co. It was basically noodles (hence the mi in the name), chicken, some vegetables and lots of a really thick sauce served on a hot metal plate (when I say hot, I mean it!!! Because of the plate, and the thickness of the sauce it took forever to cool down enough to eat, although because my chopstick skills aren't so great, this wasn't a huge problem), plus something called fruit tea punch, which was (I think) carbonated fruit tea. Also on the tray is the obligatory chilli sauce, which is always provided, but never touched by me!

Here are two friends I made along the way, a gorgeous duck-shaped sharpener (who needs a name - any suggestions?) and a guy in a costume advertising a bank (no, I have no idea what the connection is either).

My journey home was no less eventful - after buying too much at the supermarket (again! I will never learn) I walked outside to find it raining, which means it's hard to get a taxi, so I had to get on an angkot, which is not a particularly enjoyable experience with heavy shopping bags - I'm always a bit embarrassed and clumsy when it happens! However, my grumbling soon stopped when I saw that on the angkot with me was a couple with a water dispenser in a big box. I should know by now that just about anything is acceptable in an ankgot (or for that matter, a motorbike)! The angkot I had gotten on didn't go all the way to my house, so I finally got to try an ojek (motorcycle taxi), which I quite liked. The driver was lovely, chatting to me the whole way and teasing me about all my shopping, plus there was very little other traffic so we could go fast on the sections of road where there aren't potholes, or speedbumps, or pedestrians, or dogs, or any of the other things that can slow you down. 

And that was my adventure :-)